In the lead-up to the 2016 election, I began to find that any time I posted anything with the words "white evangelical(s)" in it, Facebook took the posting down.
Meanwhile, I see on an ongoing basis all sorts of obvious right-wing disinformation being circulated freely on Facebook, with no attempt that I can see made by Facebook to censor that disinformation.
More than "just the algorithm" is at work in Facebook censorship.
Obviously something more is at work as Facebook censors some people than "the algorithm."
One dynamic, I suspect, is that if people watching your account for hostile reasons flag it and report it repeatedly to Facebook, often acting in concert with others, Facebook then puts censorship mechanisms in place for your account. These often have overt political intent.
People keep saying that "the algorithm," as if it's some mystical force acting in independence of human tinkering and will, takes down postings on Facebook.
If that's the case, then I'd like some explanation for why, when I posted that graphic, it was immediately taken down with a warning to me, but when she posted it, nothing happened.
A clear silencing of me up to the post-election period….
One of the postings was a graphic that Jess Piper had posted on Substack.
After the postings were removed, I shared information about this on my Mastodon page. A follower there told me she would post the same Jess Piper graphic on her Facebook feed and see what happened.
She did so. Facebook did not take it down.
I've just posted the following on my Facebook page and we'lll see what happens:
Yesterday, Facebook immediately took down two of my postings right after I made them, then levying penalties against my account I've never had, which limit my ability to use my account until after November 19 — an interesting choice of dates when the two postings were related to the coming election on November 5.
I understand that the word Nazi is an algorithm-triggering red flag, and the photo Moxon uses with MAGA folks flying Nazi flags is another one.
But it's perfectly obvious that Moxon is not promoting Nazis, but doing the opposite. So censoring any critical mention of Nazism to refer to Trump is pro-Republican censorship.
And when another posting with no such red flags is yanked immediately the same day, something more's going on here.
Second posting Facebook took down immediately: this excerpt from A.R. Moxon today —
"Nazism is on the ballot this year, and people who consider themselves Nazis know it, even if so many of the rest of us seem not to want to. So it came to pass that Nazis came to the pro-Trump boat show in Jupiter Florida last week."
"Support for political violence is not evenly distributed across the population. Across all surveys, we find a consistent pattern. ...
Republicans are 2.5 times more likely than Democrats to support political violence. One-third of Republicans (33%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats."
The figures are from: https://www.prri.org/research/threats-to-american-democracy-ahead-of-an-unprecedented-presidential-election/
"We have to remain clear-eyed about where the real threat to our security and democracy lies. Today, that threat disproportionately lies with Trump’s MAGA movement, which has taken over one of our two political parties, and with Vance who is now aiding and abetting it. These conclusions are backed up by clear evidence."
~ Robert P. Jones
"See the Reichstag fire; or Mussolini’s use of street violence; or the American tradition of bloody-shirt politics. This is what authoritarian movements do. They promote violence and chaos—and then use the spread of violence as a justification for their illiberal aims."
"Authoritarian movements thrive on political violence for a number of reasons.
1. It intimidates ordinary people who might otherwise resist.
2. It destabilizes institutions that are supposed to act as guardrails.
3. Because authoritarian movements are not bound by honor or norms, they can exploit any violence for their own ends.
4. Chaos is a ladder."
~ Jonathan V. Last
"The reason MAGA loyalists such as J.D. Vance are targeting people who have called out Trump as authoritarian, calling them 'fascists' and blaming them for the shooting, is because those call-outs have educated Americans effectively to recognize the danger we are in.
So the last thing we should be doing now is silencing ourselves."
~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat
"Two years ago, Congress considered banning 18-20 year-olds from buying AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles after the Uvalde massacre, and some Republicans were briefly open to doing so but ultimately blocked including a ban in the bipartisan gun bill signed by Biden."
~ Steven Dennis quoted by Greg Dworkin